So, magic. Or magick, depending on your spelling preference. I think I will go with “magick” here, come to think of it, just to distinguish the circle-casting, incense-burning, symbol-carving, herb-gathering type from the James Randi type (and to make it clear I am talking about the former).
I always wanted to believe in magick. How great would that be, anyway? Magick being real, I mean, not just believing in it. Mix the correct ingredients, recite the proper incantations, and watch all the forces of the universe align to, I dunno, cause that guy who kept making fun of you on the bus in middle school to suffer permanent incontinence. It would be fantastic!
But I didn’t believe in magick, because it was preposterous. I didn’t think anybody believed in magick, because it was preposterous. (My tendency to assume people apply the same sort of logics I do to life is probably one of the reasons I am not bothered by the idea of people applying critical thinking and choosing to remain religious.) Imagine my surprise, then, when I finally started reading those books on Paganism (that I’d been aching to do my whole life, by the way) and found out that yes! People do believe in magick! In the 21st century even! I was intrigued.
Or, rather, I was intrigued until I started reading some of those people’s writings about magick. Pretty much always “magick”, which is the other reason I’m using that spelling here. Annnnnnd it turned out to be pretty much “the power of positive thinking”. That is a massive simplification, yes. But I think it’s a very serviceable one. I have not yet seen any explanation of why any given person believes in magick that really sounds like magick.
The example that comes to mind immediately is one I just read a few weeks ago: a woman, thoroughly convinced of the existence of magick, I mean all out “those who question if we really believe are just scared, and they’d be more scared if they knew what we can really do!” sort of convinced, shared that her moment of conviction was the result of having done a ritual focused on water, and then noticing a lot of people at work either crying or getting angry (because apparently getting angry has to do with water, now?) and then, a week later, it rained. In Great Britain. I’m reading this story and thinking, “No! It rained? In England?? Get out! Hey, I saw a deer in my neighbor’s yard last night! It must have been a sign from Artemis! Or maybe it’s because I LIVE IN FREAKING PENNSYLVANIA AND WE HAVE MORE DEER THAN PEOPLE HERE!” (PA ecology statistics source: me.)
What I’m trying to say here is that the concept of magick as a way to make changes in reality is not a convincing one to me, no matter how much quantum physics you try to dress it up with.
Magick as a psychological tool to help make changes in your own consciousness? That concept I can get behind. I found this blog post quite a while ago and in it he sums up a view that makes a lot of sense to me. From the post, “Magic changes my mindset; my mindset changes my probabilities of successfully manifesting my will in my life. It works by reconciling the rational and the irrational parts of myself.” The way I see it, that works.
Now one other thing that you see a lot of from magick-users is a heavy emphasis on the importance of developing your own rituals. This always struck me as silly. If you’re going to buy into this concept, shouldn’t you stick with the traditional, the tried, the (presumably) true? (This attitude is probably a holdover from my days with a set of extremely Evangelical youth leaders, and the corresponding “We know this is true because a LOT of dead guys thought it was true, and they wouldn’t have thought it was true if it wasn’t true, no?” logic.)
It was a different story, though, once I finally got to the point where I had something where I could benefit from a significant symbolic gesture like that. I’m not going into the details. But suddenly the DIY ritual instructions made sense: if the only thing you’re changing is you, then why would you want to use anybody’s plans but your own? Trying to perform a ritual that you didn’t have a hand in constructing now seemed like trying to run your relationship based on doing exactly what your older sister does, in spite of the fact that her boyfriend likes football and reality television while yours likes chess and baking brioche.
And that thought circles right back to those evangelical days. The thing about evangelicalism is that it’s very definitely a one-size-fits-all approach to religion. And even though our church was Methodist, these particular youth leaders (who, as the cool active adults, obvs had much more influence on a teenager than the religious leaders for the adults) were decidedly evangelical. Also possibly crazy, but that’s probably just the retroactive bitterness talking. Their very clear message was that this religion was right for every single person on earth and if it didn’t feel right for you then A) feelings are ephemeral and not important as an indicator of faith and B) there’s just something wrong with you.
This led to some fun cognitive dissonance for me at times, such as the Sunday School session where they brought an African convert in to speak to us and tell us how freeing Christianity was after being raised in his native culture’s terrifying animist traditions. There was much discussion afterwards about how gosh, wasn’t it horrible how he used to live, and wasn’t it just so wonderful that he’d found Jesus and been freed from all that? Except I didn’t participate in that discussion because I was thinking, “You know, animism sounds like a much more rational way to approach unknowns than Christianity does.” I didn’t say anything, of course, because as a good little Christian I knew that thought meant there was something wrong with me.
What I always found ironic was that these particular leaders always encouraged us to actively engage other belief system as a way of strengthening our Christian apologetics muscles. I.e., if you find a certain argument tempting, you should go learn more about it so you can properly understand why it’s horribly, horribly wrong. (As a high school graduation gift, they gave me a copy of the book Defeating Darwinism.) I knew this wouldn’t actually work that way though, since I knew if I read about paganism I’d just convert, since it seemed about a hundred thousand million times more appealing than Christianity.
I still wouldn’t have believed in magic, though. I either roll my eyes and shrug or laugh derisively, depending on my mood, when I hear atheists talk about how you just CAN’T be religious and hold a scientific worldview at the same time, because there’s just no way you can hold the two different mindsets in your head. Well, you can, because I did for quite a few years. If somebody had told desperately Christian high school me that they didn’t believe in evolution because the Bible told them not to, my response would have been, “Wow, you are made of pure, unadulterated idiocy.” (High school me was not known for her tact.) But I still fell in line with the C.S. Lewis-style apologetics, because they were given to me by intelligent people who I trusted, so I figured they had to work together even if I couldn’t personally explain how. Also, all the miracle stuff had happened in the past.
Ok, I think I have wandered away into another post entirely. Quite possibly one that I’ve already written, back in ye olde Livejournal days. So I’m just going to stop now, because I can’t quite figure out what the purpose of all this was.
creekofconsciousness 
I had to go look up animism. That’s funny, because I kinda believe it a bit. I believe everything is a part of God, but not necessarily the God of the Christians or the Jews, or the Hindi, or anyone really. “God” is just a convenient word. A better word maybe, if you wanna be all geeky, is “the Force.” Or, what I like better, is a quote from Delenn on Babylon 5, that pretty much sums up what I believe: “We are star stuff. We are the universe made manifest.”
But yeah, your youth leaders were hella evangelical. They fascinated me, as the strict Catholic I was raised. Our church allowed for no exploration or embracing or researching of others… but my family did. Hence, why I got to spend time with you and your church’s activities. It was eye-opening. But I learned that I liked Catholicism more than Method…ology. Still, you were pretty gung-ho about your faith, as I recall. That’s why I’ve been so surprised by your turn to Paganism.
As for magic (and I’m spelling it magic, not magick, so there), well, I believed in Santa and the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy when I was a kid. I wised up to them all by the time I was 9. But still, magic existed in my life for a time, and I remember it, and the wonder. To the extent that the belief still exists in little kids and THEY believe in the magic, I believe magic exists in our world. I believe in tiny miracles. I believe that, say, the power of love can affect (I think I mean that use of the word here) small changes, that laughter heals, things like that.
But actual magic as a result of incantations? Fairies and dragons and wizards? No. And that is PARTICULARLY why I love reading fantasy. Because it is not real, because it never could be real. My reading is an escape from the real world, so I want something fantastic. I want a solid, well thought out magic system, or something that is off JUST enough to make the world one that could never be. That’s why Brandon Sanderson has become, I feel, one of today’s best writers. I don’t know about the WoT novels he wrote, but all the original magic systems he’s developed have been incredible, and he also tells a great story.
I could keep going about this, but at what point do I write my own blog post in response to yours? Which reminds me, having written about a topic on LJ does not preclude you from writing about such a topic here. For one thing, unless you’re providing us with a link to the LJ post, we don’t have access to the article. For two, it might still be nice to know what you have to say, so share it somehow, please. And for three, you’re now at a different stage in your life. If nothing else, you now have a child, and I’m sure becoming a mom has changed your stances on a few things, or at least tweaked your feelings. So feel free to write something fresh. It might be very different. And you might not know how different ’til you start writing.
I am thinking about taking some of the older lj articles and reflecting on them here. I’ll see. Here’s a few lines from one of them, though, covering some of the thinking I’ve done over the years about how was I so into things then?
“The next paragraph is that I am now insanely angry with these people. All my life I was afraid to read about other spiritual traditions – except Judaism, because the Jews were all right, just a little misguided about how superimportant Jesus was, but surely God would figure everything out for them because they were His People! If I’d felt I had a choice, I likely would have become a witch. But I was scared even to read about it because that was the voice of the devil calling….
…But they weren’t bad people. There aren’t many people out there willing to treat teenagers as full human beings for one thing. They were generous with both their time and physical resources. They were clever and quick-witted (always key virtues for me). I’m sure there are plenty of other things that I will be able to remember once I stop being so damn angry. For now, all I can see is that they were part of a delusion that holds that religion is a one-size-fits-all deal, and they convinced me of that so strongly that I stayed to their path even as it became more and more clear that it was not sized for me after all.”
My logic pretty much was, “ok, these incredibly intelligent and (apparently) thoughtful people say this is true. They’re right about other things – one was a PhD in the field I wanted to go into, ChemE – so they must be right about this. The apologetics seem so logical!” I was never personally happy about that though. The people, yes. I loved the acceptance and the community feeling and the caring that we did for one another. But the Christian mythos? I never thought to myself, “How wonderful that this is true!” It was more, “THIS is the one that’s true? Really? You’re sure? Ugh, all right….”
As a Pagan, Witch, and believer in magic (i.e. a crazy person) “[…] actual magic as a result of incantations? Fairies and dragons […]?” isn’t really magic. As Braveheart says, we don’t shoot fireballs from our eyes and lightning bolts from our arse.
Magic (I also eschew the “k”) is basically exactly as described in the post in my experience. By which I mean to say that magic creates a formalized means by which to change your own perceptions about a situation. It invests a certain amount of effort and energy and, usually, cash-y money into a situation and helps to make a person feel like they’ve gone far enough toward a specifically held goal that to back out or give up is no longer tenable. As a polytheist who mixes his religion with his magic (and this doesn’t have to be the case), I also work with my gods which invests a certain amount of my own divine spark and theirs into the working. Pissing off a god by giving up on a process after asking them to help you with it in some way is not a good way to build a relationship with them!
The idea that magic changes your internal realty as presented in the post is my experience, too. If I do a working to sell my home (and I did do a working to sell my home) I don’t expect it to just work. But, what I do expect is that things that might not have occurred — the tiny miracles as you put it — might be made more obvious to me and opportunity may knock more regularly or more loudly than it may have otherwise. Is it all evidence applied to a situation ex post facto to make myself feel more powerful in a dark and frightening world? There’s a real chance that this is so. But, in the end, if it makes me more capable of tackling the challenges presented before me, it may not matter.
Also, Sanderson’s WoT books are the best of the series. I love me some Robert Jordan, but the dude couldn’t write a character (especially a female character) that made me feel a lot of empathy. Sanderson’s characters and dialog make me want to read it out load, crying out heroically. I’ve you’ve read the rest of the series, you might as well just finish them out.
Yeah, about those tiny miracles. I could see how doing a working might refocus your energy, or redirect your thoughts (or cause you just to be more aware in general), of more opportunities, or enable you to be more observant. I’m even willing to go so far as to say it might even change your luck a bit. If you re-align yourself enough, then YOU personally may have changed enough (your posture, your manner of speaking) in such a way that people respond to you differently, and thus things DO change as a result. Do I think it is just the working that changed the other people? No, but I will accept that the working had a proper effect on you and your behavior or attitude or perceptions, for a time, or if it’s a strong working, for a longer time. And therein lies those tiny miracles.
Sorry to take so long to respond. I sign up to get notification of follow-up comments to the post via email, or any comments on the post via email (I think?), but I never see anything, and I’m not in the habit of coming back to check. The idea that I was the only person commenting here, and that even (The Author of This Blog) wasn’t responding did not surprise me. After all, no one ever comments on my blog other than the very occasional spammer. It’s very lonely over there. I guess maybe that’s what I get for having a blog on a non-commercial site? *sigh*
I will make a point of reading Sanderson’s WoT books when all of them are out and available for my Kindle (we’re still waiting on, what, “Memory of Light,” right?). But I WILL read them. ‘Course, I’ll have to read all of them, because when I read them the first time, they were so unremarkable, I literally forgot the contents of the series by three months after I finished reading the last book I’d read. Couldn’t even remember the main character’s name. The books weren’t as boring as Terry Goodkind’s “Wizard’s First Rule” series, but they came pretty close. I like my fantasy to have a bit more life. Like Steven Brust, Robin Hobb, or, as previously mentioned, Brandon Sanderson.
“Mix the correct ingredients, recite the proper incantations, and watch all the forces of the universe align to, I dunno, cause that guy who kept making fun of you on the bus in middle school to suffer permanent incontinence. It would be fantastic!”
I love this. That was pretty much the thoughts of me every day of middle school.